Edward Snowden misspoke on a secret American spy base located in Auckland

17 Mar 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: , , , , ,

Edward Snowden made a last-minute intervention in the recent New Zealand election to claim that there is a secret American spy base located in Auckland. I have persistently asked on Twitter where it is so I can look it up on Google maps Street.

Today, Bryce Edwards revealed in a reply to one of my tweets that Edward Snowden got mixed up. It is yet to be revealed where this secret spy base really is so I can still look it up on Google Maps Street view.

If there is a secret spy base anywhere in New Zealand, I’m sure the neighbours would have noticed and lodged objections to the resource consent for the planning permission because of all the cell towers.

The GCSB’s Waihopai spy station pictured above which was built decades ago in rural New Zealand is decidedly conspicuous.

 

Edward Snowden Is No Hero – The New Yorker

16 Sep 2014 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in liberalism, war and peace Tags: , , , , ,

Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications…

What makes leak cases difficult is that some leaking—some interaction between reporters and sources who have access to classified information—is normal, even indispensable, in a society with a free press.

It’s not easy to draw the line between those kinds of healthy encounters and the wholesale, reckless dumping of classified information by the likes of Snowden or Bradley Manning.

Indeed, Snowden was so irresponsible in what he gave the Guardian and the Post that even these institutions thought some of it should not be disseminated to the public. The Post decided to publish only four of the forty-one slides that Snowden provided. Its exercise of judgment suggests the absence of Snowden’s…

The American government, and its democracy, are flawed institutions. But our system offers legal options to disgruntled government employees and contractors. They can take advantage of federal whistle-blower laws; they can bring their complaints to Congress; they can try to protest within the institutions where they work.

But Snowden did none of this. Instead, in an act that speaks more to his ego than his conscience, he threw the secrets he knew up in the air—and trusted, somehow, that good would come of it. We all now have to hope that he’s right.

via Edward Snowden Is No Hero – The New Yorker.

Richard Cohen: NSA is doing what Google does

16 Sep 2014 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in economics of media and culture, liberalism, war and peace Tags: , ,

Greenwald likens Snowden to Daniel Ellsberg, who revealed the Pentagon Papers to The Post and the New York Times more than four decades ago.

Not quite. The Pentagon Papers proved that a succession of U.S. presidents had lied about their intentions regarding Vietnam — Lyndon Johnson above all. In 1964, he had campaigned against Barry Goldwater for the presidency as virtually the peace candidate while actually planning to widen the war.

As the Times put it in a 1996 story, the Pentagon Papers “demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance.”

In contrast, no one lied about the various programs disclosed last week. They were secret, yes, but members of Congress were informed — and they approved.

Safeguards were built in. If, for instance, the omniscient computers picked up a pattern of phone calls from Mr. X to Suspected Terrorist Y, the government had to go to court to find out what was said. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act established a court consisting of 11 rotating federal judges. These judges are the same ones who rule on warrants the government seeks in domestic criminal cases. If we trust them for that, why would we not trust them for other things as well?

via Richard Cohen: NSA is doing what Google does – The Washington Post.

Some people are still shocked when they learn that governments spy on people. What next? Will people be shocked to learn that the police investigate innocent people in the course of routine enquiries.

As evidence mounts, it’s getting harder to defend Edward Snowden – The Washington Post

04 Aug 2014 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in politics - USA, war and peace Tags: , ,

The evidence is mounting that Edward Snowden and his journalist allies have helped al Qaeda improve their security against NSA surveillance.

In May, Recorded Future, a predictive analytics firm, published a persuasive timeline showing that Snowden’s revelations about NSA’s capabilities were followed quickly by a burst of new, robust encryption tools from al-Qaeda and its affiliates:

via As evidence mounts, it’s getting harder to defend Edward Snowden – The Washington Post.

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